New 7.1 hairstyle looks nothing like the winning hairstyle from the 2023 contest

[Rolder50]

However, as the development work progressed, the light, delicate, and voluminous curls required for Natural Curls could not be implemented perfectly, despite implementation of the recent graphical update in FFXIV, due to limitations such as the polygon count.

So impossible to do that third party modders were able to add curly hair just fine even BEFORE the graphical update

[DiaDeem]

third party modders were able to add

cofcofvierahrothhatscof

[Astronis]

Genuinely asking, how were you able to render fluffy textures on non-character models such as environmental assets in the form of bushes or the fur of certain creatures, most notably alpacas, if said polygon count issue exists?

For bushes and round plants, a lot of them are done with billboards, which are flat polygons with a texture on them, then overlapped several times to give the impression of randomness and volume. If you look at the plants in FFXIV at certain angles, you'll see they're made up of clumps of six flat planes arranged in hexagons. They do a similar thing for fluffy miqo'te tails, which are long tubes with four planes of fur sticking out at right angles. The few hairs that have very curly bits in them are formed similarly to the way miqo tails are.

The fluffy alpaca hair is a material shader that makes the roundish model look like it has a lot more depth than it does. Alpacas don't have a lot of polygons at all, they just have a texture and shader on them that makes it look like they are made of curly fluffy fur. That's something that might work for player character hair if the hair was very curly, but the design in question wants ringlets rather than tight curls, along with the ability to dye the tips of the ringlets. Something like that would be harder to do convincingly with a shader.

[Shezza]

The hair looks better the way square made it rather than that concept art picture, I think twitter tourists are overblowing this issue out of proportions.

[astralmoon]

Because the modders don't take into account that the game has to also run on toasters so they do not care about stuff like optimisation and poly counts and complex shaders.

Exactly.

And people bringing up these mod arguments have a valid point! But I don't like nor endorse these arguments because console players & people who have low end PCs don't have access to these due to the fact that mods typically require tampering with game files & they are often not optimised.

These players deserve better from the get go. This is something that should have been implemented in the game itself.

[lolnotacat]

Hello.

Thank you for all your feedback on the hairstyle that will be implemented in Patch 7.1. We would like to apologize for the major confusion we have caused.

For this patch, we started work to implement "Natural Curls" from the winning entries of the Hairstyle Design Contest, based on the idea of adding not only straight hair but also a variety of other hairstyles.

However, as the development work progressed, the light, delicate, and voluminous curls required for Natural Curls could not be implemented perfectly, despite implementation of the recent graphical update in FFXIV, due to limitations such as the polygon count.

Therefore, the finished result is a hairstyle that has not been implemented as Natural Curls, but as a wavy bob hairstyle, which is called "Doing the Wave" in-game.

However, since we did use the winning entry as a reference in the development process, we included a statement to that effect in the patch notes. We are deeply sorry that this has resulted in a great deal of confusion and concern.

Although we were not able to make it happen this time, the development team will continue to strive to implement many more hairstyles in the future. As for Natural Curls, which was not implemented in Patch 7.1, we will persevere in our efforts to look for other ways to implement this hairstyle.

We appreciate your feedback and hope you continue to enjoy FFXIV!

I find the poly count excuse to be a bit spurious since this is an issue that modders have (once again) worked around for years.

[ronibosch]

If you can't create the curls because of poly count, then why even pick it as a winner? You're only bringing everyone's hopes up, including the artist's. (Not directed at the mod, btw)

[Pyshiro]

The hair looks better the way square made it rather than that concept art picture, I think twitter tourists are overblowing this issue out of proportions.

Your opinion doesn't matter. They're a winner of the contest and most if not all past winning entries were faithfully recreated 1:1 with no such "inspiration" wordage ever used before until now. There is precedence and that is why people are upset, because the idea is that all winners will eventually be implemented one way or another. Please look at the first hairstyle contest winners from 2015.

[SpecterSaru]

Capcom is down the street from y'all. Capcom has openly said that they hire black artists to help with the design process. Guild Wars II had black hairstyles in the double digits and has fewer polygons to work with. There's no excuse anymore. Hire somebody outside the company if no one inside can do it. People of color, especially black people are tired of getting pushed to the side. Do y'all even understand how much it meant to some of us who finally could see their characters properly in the new lighting engine with the graphical update? How many of us were thankful we didn't have to deal with that awful lip shine? It's insane! It's so frustrating and demeaning to be told it's not possible when we know it is, 3rd-party tools or no. Yes the 3rd-party tools aren't having to optimize for multiple systems, but they have shown us the fact that it is possible, which the opposite of what y'all are claiming.

Imagine implementing not one, but two "street" styles influenced by African-American culture, yet you constantly get pushed to the side when it comes to wanting to actually look a little bit like yourself in game.

[Rosenoire]

Imagine implementing not one, but two "street" styles influenced by African-American culture, yet you constantly get pushed to the side when it comes to wanting to actually look a little bit like yourself in game.

Yes to everything you said, but especially this. It's too hard when it's about representation, but no problems when it comes to appropriation.